OPINION | BILL O’REILLY: AN
AWFUL, AWFUL MAN
As Fox News last year was plowing through the sexual harassment
scandal involving now-former network chief Roger Ailes, King of Cable News Bill
O’Reilly couldn’t have been more dismissive of the victims. “In this country,
every famous, powerful or wealthy person is a target. You’re a target,”
O’Reilly said in a July appearance on “Late Night” with
Seth Meyers. “I’m a target. Anytime somebody could come out and sue us, attack
us, go to the press or anything like that. … I stand behind Roger 100 percent.”
Roger was the wrong man to stand behind.
Subsequent events would say why: An internal investigation of Fox
News turned up a series of complaints
regarding Ailes’s conduct toward women. Former host Gretchen Carlson, who
kicked off all the action with a lawsuit against Ailes in early July, received
a settlement worth $20 million plus a no-nonsense apology from Fox News’s
parent company, 21st Century Fox. Ailes was ousted, though he denied the claims
against him.
Months after lamenting his status as a “target,” we are learning
that O’Reilly was speaking from deep experience. The New York Times reported on Saturday
that about $13 million has been dished out over the years — by
O’Reilly and his employer — to resolve complaints from women regarding
O’Reilly’s antics. The claims shed light on just why O’Reilly and his former
boss Ailes fashioned a mutual protection racket on the
premises of Fox News: They both needed someone who’d have their
back.
Reporting by the New York Times builds on an existing docket of
allegations against O’Reilly. We already knew, for instance, that former
producer Andrea Mackris had filed a sexual harassment suit against O’Reilly in
2004, alleging all manner of lurid conduct against the top host. She came away
with a $9 million settlement, according to the Times. And news broke earlier this year
that former employee Juliet Huddy had secured a settlement over O’Reilly’s
alleged sexual advances toward her “in 2011, at a time he exerted significant
influence over her airtime,” reports the New York Times.
That there’s more to this pattern should surprise no one who has
observed O’Reilly’s incorrigibility over 20-plus years on Fox News’s airwaves.
As the New York Times reports, O’Reilly in 2002 “stormed into the newsroom and
screamed at a young producer, according to current and former employees, some
of whom witnessed the incident.” That woman, Rachel Witlieb Bernstein,
subsequently received a settlement.
Two others — Rebecca Gomez Diamond and Laurie Dhue — also
received settlements in 2011 and 2016, respectively. In the case of Diamond,
her settlement was paid by O’Reilly himself, as was Mackris’s. Dhue worked as
an anchor at Fox News from 2000 to 2008 and cited sexual harassment allegations
against both O’Reilly and Ailes.
Nor is that all. In her 2016 lawsuit against Fox News, former
host Andrea Tantaros cited alleged sexual advances by O’Reilly, though she did
not name him as a defendant in her civil action. Here’s the key paragraph about O’Reilly’s
efforts:
[C]ommencing
in February 2016, Bill O’Reilly (“O’Reilly”), whom Tantaros had considered to
be a good friend and a person from whom she sought career guidance, started
sexually harassing her by, inter alia, (a) asking her to come to stay with him
on Long Island where it would be “very private,” and (b) telling her on more
than one occasion that he could “see [her] as a wild girl,” and that he
believed that she had a “wild side.”
More alleged sleaziness rounds out the O’Reilly file. As reported
by the New York Times, former “O’Reilly Factor” guest Wendy Walsh claims that
O’Reilly made the moves on her in 2013. Per the story: “Ms. Walsh said that she
met Mr. O’Reilly for a dinner, arranged by his secretary, at the restaurant in
the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. During the dinner, she said, he told her he
was friends with Mr. Ailes, and promised to make her a network contributor — a
job that can pay several hundred thousand dollars a year.”
After the meal, O’Reilly invited her to his hotel suite; Walsh
refused to go, and insisted on hanging at the hotel bar. There, O’Reilly
behaved like O’Reilly: “He became hostile, telling her that she could forget
any career advice he had given her and that she was on her own. He also told
her that her black leather purse was ugly.”
Not long thereafter, as the New York Times reports, Wendy Walsh
disappeared from “The O’Reilly Factor.” She became a former guest, just
the way Diamond became a former Fox Business host, just the way Mackris
became a former producer for “The O’Reilly Factor,” just the way Dhue
became a former anchor, just the way Huddy became a former on-air
talent, just the way Bernstein became a former junior producer.
Through it all, O’Reilly remains the current King of Cable
News. Nightly he spins whatever arguments are close at hand to make excuses for
the actions and behavior of a friend and inveterate misogynist — Trump. He
promotes his serially mediocre books, including the recently released “Old School: Life in the Sane Lane,”
which goes after “snowflakes,” a.k.a. people who come forth with grievances.
And he rules the ratings.
That rather critical distinction explains why the parent company
of Fox News would release a statement defending O’Reilly’s conduct.
21st
Century Fox takes matters of workplace behavior very seriously. Notwithstanding
the fact that no current or former Fox News employee ever took advantage of the
21st Century Fox hotline to raise a concern about Bill O’Reilly, even
anonymously, we have looked into these matters over the last few months and
discussed them with Mr. O’Reilly. While he denies the merits of these claims,
Mr. O’Reilly has resolved those he regarded as his personal responsibility. Mr.
O’Reilly is fully committed to supporting our efforts to improve the
environment for all our employees at Fox News.
Now for O’Reilly’s statement:
Just
like other prominent and controversial people, I’m vulnerable to lawsuits from
individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity. In my more
than 20 years at Fox News Channel, no one has ever filed a complaint about me
with the Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline.
But most
importantly, I’m a father who cares deeply for my children and who would do
anything to avoid hurting them in any way. And so I have put to rest any
controversies to spare my children.
The
worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my
employer, the Fox News Channel. Those of us in the arena are constantly at
risk, as are our families and children. My primary efforts will continue to be
to put forth an honest TV program and to protect those close to me.
Bolding added to both statements to highlight a commonality: What
the heck is up with this “hotline” stuff? Must these women suffer twice? Once
at the allegedly manipulative and power-tripping O’Reilly, and again at the
hands of people faulting them for their failure to call a damn hotline? Shall
we henceforth judge all those who claim sexual harassment by their due
diligence in ringing up some phone number? And consider the context here: We
have a company and a top host faulting women for failing to use a hotline, when
it has been well known for some time that Ailes had financed a unit at Fox
News entrusted with surveilling those he felt might be out to
undermine his network. So perhaps those who felt harassed at Fox News didn’t
feel so hot about the hotline.
The “hotline” angle, however, only grazes at the depravity in
these statements. As for O’Reilly’s Teddy Roosevelt defense that he’s like the
man in the arena, think about that: Anderson Cooper is “in the arena”; Jake
Tapper is “in the arena”; Brian Williams is “in the arena”; Scott Pelley is “in
the arena”; Sean Hannity is “in the arena”; Bret Baier is “in the arena”; Brian
Stelter is “in the arena.” How many of these fellows have stacked up a
basketball team’s worth of women willing to put their names to allegations of
sexual harassment or mistreatment?
The notion, furthermore, that O’Reilly would just roll over and
gift-wrap big-money settlements to undeserving complainants just to save his
family a bit of trouble — well, that notion contradicts everything we know
about O’Reilly. That is, the stubborn and penny-pinching “old school” guy
who’d never surrender a dollar he didn’t have to. As for his family-protection
rationale, who aside from the die-hard viewers of “The O’Reilly Factor” would
consider believing him? Perhaps an appropriate way to protect his family from
all these harassment complaints would be to start treating colleagues with more
respect.
Fredric S. Newman, a lawyer for O’Reilly, told the New York
Times: “We are now seriously considering legal action to defend Mr. O’Reilly’s
reputation.” Okay, but in light of O’Reilly’s proven credibility problems
exposed by various “far left” media outlets in 2015, his
frequently offensive and irresponsible comments, and
his core nastiness, it’s not clear just how much
reputation there is to protect anymore. With his far-flung misadventures,
O’Reilly appears to have libel-proofed himself.
The Erik Wemple Blog sent Newman a question: What sort of legal
action? Newman passed along the request to crisis communications ace Mark
Fabiani, who indicated that Team O’Reilly wasn’t commenting beyond the
statement cited above, from O’Reilly. In any case, Newman’s words read like an
assertion of legal thuggery designed to keep this story confined to early April
2017. As the New York Times documented, Newman has some experience on this
front, as he sent some scary correspondence to Huddy warning of dire
consequences should she press a claim against O’Reilly.
An aggressive lawyer, great ratings and a supportive parent
company addicted to the advertising revenue churned out by “The O’Reilly
Factor”: The King of Cable News has all the support he needs to continue his
particular brand of on-air showmanship. Indeed, it has been reported that
O’Reilly’s contract at the network has been
renewed.
So O’Reilly will continue in his dual role as the network’s
greatest asset and liability, all wrapped up in one self-important package. If
nothing else, these latest revelations flesh out the deep affinities that he
shares with his vanilla-milkshake-drinking buddy Trump, who has his own
patented ways of approaching women. When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced
last October, O’Reilly declined to air the most damaging part of the dialogue
between then-businessman Trump and Billy Bush — that quip about grabbing women
“by the pussy.” Why leave that out?
“I’m not going to play too much of it, because it’s crude guy
talk,” O’Reilly told his viewers.
Here’s an anchor who shouldn’t be trusted to share space with his
colleagues, nor to report on women and men. He is an awful, awful man.
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